Lisa Van Goor at the Coors Event Center at Colorado University on Thursday, June 21, 2012. Van Goor played women's basketball at CU between 1981 and 1985 and is CU's all-time leading scorer, rebounder and shot blocker. Stephen Mitchell, The Denver Post

Former Colorado State University basketball star, Jen Burford, ref's a boys high school basketball game at the 2012 Gold Crown Summer Team Camp at Gold Crown Field House in Lakewood Friday afternoon. Burford is a 3-year Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference referee and is participating in a referee camp within the Gold Crown Summer Camp to polish up her ref skills along with many other referees. Andy Cross, The Denver Post

Jennifer Buford would take Major League Baseball cards, cut out the faces of the players and replace them with pictures of herself.

“I had always had that dream of being able to play at that level,” Buford said.

She didn’t need to dream long before she found herself playing professionally.

A Colorado State University softball star from 1994-98, Buford, now 35, went on to play with the Carolina Diamonds and Florida Wahoos of the Women’s Professional Softball League. (The league folded in 2001.) At the time, for Buford and others in the league, simply getting paid to play the game was new to them.

“For most female athletes, it wasn’t like you play sports for the money, by any means, or the opportunity for money in the future,” said Buford, who played in the league from 1998 to 2000.

“Even though it was a professional league and each of us were getting paid, we weren’t getting paid as much as, let’s say, a Major League Baseball player would, but it was a good opportunity for us to continue to play past college,” Buford said.

Such opportunities in the 1990s in college and professional athletics were possible through Title IX, federal legislation signed into law June 23, 1972, that prohibits sex discrimination in education.

“I don’t think anyone appreciates it as much now, for sure, because you don’t realize what it was like without it,” said University of Colorado senior basketball player Meagan Malcolm-Peck. “… There would be more struggles without Title IX. Just being able to talk to older people has helped inform us more, since we are not aware what it was like before.”

Added University of Denver senior volleyball player Faimie Kingsley: “For women back then to play a sport they love but not be able to continue beyond a point … it’s very interesting to think about how far we’ve come.”

Saturday marked Title IX’s 40th anniversary, and Buford reaped the benefits of its provisions even after college.

Just a year before Buford finished her four years of eligibility at Colorado State, the WPSL (formerly known as Women’s Pro Fastpitch) was founded in 1997. So during her early years as a collegiate athlete, she had not considered a career in softball. She was simply satisfied with her athletic scholarship at CSU and the proximity to her family in Grand Junction, about a five-hour drive from Fort Collins.

At CSU, Buford was named an All-American in 1997 and 1998. In 1997, she helped the Rams win the Western Athletic Conference championship and come within one out of playing in the Women’s College World Series.

After her first season playing professionally with the Diamonds, Buford returned to CSU for an extra semester to finish her degree and was a walk-on for the basketball team. She played in 25 games as a point guard and helped the Rams advance to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.

While the CSU women’s basketball team was enjoying a revival during the late 1990s, the softball team had come a long way before Buford joined.

CSU cut softball and baseball for the 1993-94 school year as the amount of state aid was reduced. The decision rattled the Softball Coaches Association, parents and players, who filed a suit against CSU contending that women were being denied equal opportunity to play sports in college.

The Supreme Court ruled that CSU was not in compliance with Title IX because the school didn’t have an equal number of male to female participants in athletics. Softball was reinstituted, and Buford was a member of the first class that played as a result of the ruling.

“In fact, I would have never went to CSU if it hadn’t been for Title IX,” said Buford, who was heavily recruited for basketball and golf.

“I’m a huge Title IX supporter. I once described it as the Magna Carta of women’s athletics in general, but it’s more than that,” NCAA president Mark Emmert said this year during a roundtable meeting with The Denver Post before the Women’s Final Four in Denver. “… A lot of people didn’t want to go in that direction; it did force that change. And that’s been extremely healthy and really shifted the landscape, and we love it. It’s been incredibly important to the NCAA.

“What we have to do is continue to get people to understand that this isn’t a zero-sum game; this is about investing in half our population and providing them with the same opportunity to do what the other half gets.”

About a decade before Buford entered Colorado State, Lisa Van Goor was playing on the CU women’s basketball team from 1981-85.

Though Title IX was signed into law in 1972, the CU women’s basketball team didn’t get recognized as a varsity sport until 1975 — and it was under the recreation center, not the CU athletic department.

By the time Van Goor stepped into the scene, the CU women’s basketball team was in the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. Still, the equality of the CU women’s and men’s athletic programs wasn’t where it is today.

Her parents had to pay for her to make recruiting visits, while the CU athletic department paid for the men’s visits. The women’s basketball team also had secondary practice times to the men’s. The 6-foot-3 center had practices that started at noon, forcing her to get all of her classes done early.

“I was a science major, and I had lots of labs and presentations, so it was almost impossible to get all my classes in,” said Van Goor, who remains the CU career leader in scoring, rebounding and blocked shots.

The men’s basketball and football teams also benefited from training tables, which provided prepared meals that other varsity sports didn’t receive.

But for Van Goor, during her collegiate years, those disparities didn’t bother her much — and it didn’t keep her from making the all-Big Eight Conference team all four years and being a finalist for national player of the year her last three years.

The opportunity to play basketball was enough, and she went on to play seven years in Europe; there was no women’s pro basketball in the United States at that time.

“The only opportunity there was to go to Europe,” said Van Goor, who retired from basketball in 1992, five years before the Women’s National Basketball Association began play. “My first year there, I played in the Canary Islands, Spain. I wasn’t making any money. … At the same time back in the United States, I think they were trying to start pro leagues. So my agent just kept saying, ‘Hang tight.’ Things didn’t start going until the early 1990s. But it was a great opportunity. I wouldn’t trade that opportunity for anything in the world.”

Van Goor, who in 1999 was the first woman inducted into the CU Sports Hall of Hame, returned to the school as the athletic department’s director of special events and as a fundraiser. She is now the executive director of Buffs4Life, a support system for CU’s alumni athletes.

Today’s female athletes “don’t know how good they have it,” Van Goor said last week. “When you’re going for it, you never know you’re lacking for stuff just like the girls today. They don’t know how far women’s athletics have come. They arrive; they expect the facilities to be good. They expect to travel charter.

“We have a more stronger population of women because they are able to be an athlete and all the good things that come out of being able to compete: the teamwork, the discipline, the confidence. I think it really helped me.”

Buford, who was inducted into the CSU Sports Hall of Fame in 2010, reflected similar thoughts that the values she received from competition are more accessible to females now than before, and the opportunity to pursue sports as a professional career isn’t as new to this generation of female athletes.

“The kids that I coach now don’t even realize what their parents had to do or even their grandparents,” Buford said.

Now a licensed banker at Chase Bank, Buford officiates basketball for the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference and the Colorado High School Activities Association.

“That’s only two generations of how dramatic things have changed for women. Still, there’s certainly some room to grow,” Buford said. “I think the men participants certainly outweigh the women’s, but I think as each year goes by, it gets considerably better.”

Timeline for Title IX

1973-74: Two years after the passage of Title IX, Colorado high school girls competed in seven sports at the high school level — basketball, gymnastics, skiing, swimming, tennis, track and field and volleyball — compared with 13 varsity sports for their male peers.

1974: A year after defeating Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match, Billie Jean King helped found the Women’s Sports Foundation, along with former Olympic swimmer Donna de Verona. The same year, the YWCA of Metropolitan Denver founded Sportswomen of Colorado, a foundation supporting and celebrating local female athletes. Sportswomen of Colorado launched its Hall of Fame in 1984 and has inducted more than 100 female athletes or coaches.

1977: Sports Illustrated and reporter Melissa Ludtke won their lawsuit against Major League Baseball to enable female reporters to gain equal access to locker rooms.

1979: Congress established a “three-prong test” for the application of the Title IX law. The three prongs are equal participation opportunities, equal treatment in program areas and equal access to financial assistance. It wouldn’t be enough just to create girls teams — the numbers must be proportional to the percentage of females in the student body, and those teams must be given the same facilities, coaching and scholarship opportunities available for boys.

1981: It was a big year for two of Colorado’s best homegrown female athletes. Basketball and volleyball star Tanya Haave of Evergreen, who played basketball for Pat Summitt at Tennessee, was named Colorado Sportswoman of the Year, while track star Rhonda Blanford graduated from Aurora Central and headed off to what would be a stellar college career at Nebraska. Haave recently returned to Colorado to be the head women’s basketball coach at Metro State. Blanford-Green spent 16 years at the Colorado High School Activities Association, most recently as associate commissioner, before accepting a job running the Nebraska School Activities Association.

1982: The NCAA held its first women’s Final Four in basketball. Louisiana Tech, led by point guard Kim Mulkey, won the first title. (Previously, women’s basketball titles were awarded by the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women.) Mulkey, now the head coach at Baylor, led the Bears to an undefeated season and the national championship in 2011-12. Baylor beat Notre Dame in the title game at the Pepsi Center in Denver in April.

1984: The U.S. Supreme Court weakened Title IX by no longer requiring any institutions that didn’t directly receive federal money to adhere to Title IX. Congress overturned the changes in 1987.

1985: The U.S. Women’s National soccer team made its debut in international competition.

1992-93: As Title IX passed its 20th anniversary, Colorado high school girls were competing in 11 varsity sports. That year, boys gymnastics did not compete in Colorado for the first time.

1996: The Summer Olympics in Atlanta were branded as the “women’s Olympics” and featured the debut of such sports as women’s soccer and softball. The U.S. women claimed soccer gold. Colorado’s Amy Van Dyken, above, won four gold medals in swimming at the Atlanta Games.

1997: The WNBA made its debut with eight teams. It now has 12 teams.

1999: In perhaps the biggest women’s sports moment in U.S. history, the women’s national soccer team won the World Cup by beating China on penalty kicks. More than 90,000 people watched the final at the Rose Bowl.

2008: Female ski jumpers, led by American Lindsay Van, sued to gain entry into the Olympics. The sport will debut at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.

2010: A District Court in Connecticut ruled that Quinnipiac violated Title IX when it eliminated its varsity volleyball team and tried to replace it with a competitive cheerleading squad. In Colorado high schools, cheerleading squads can count toward Title IX compliance. More than 4,600 girls participated in competitive cheerleading in Colorado in 2010-11, along with 119 boys.

2010-11: The NCAA reported that the total number of male and female college athletes increased for the ninth consecutive year. According to the NCAA’s Sports Sponsorship and Participation study, 57 percent of college athletes in 2010-11 were men, though there were nearly 1,200 more women’s collegiate teams than men’s squads.

2012: Women’s boxing will make its debut at the Summer Olympics in London. However, softball has been dropped.

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